Medieval Household Pest Control

by: Paul Robertshaw <probertshaw@SCIENCEPHOTO.CO.UK>

In our modern sanitary environment, it's easy to forget that
the medieval householder was engaged in a constant war against the
encroachment of various vermin. The tiny invaders were given a
helping hand by the rather unsanitary practice of covering the
floor with layers of rushes. Given below are some of the
suggestions that contemporary accounts made for dealing with pests.
(SAFETY WARNING! Some of the herbs listed are VERY poisonous!!!
Collecting endangered herbs is now illegal and not to be
encouraged.)

Another thing to consider....Pest control was usually done by
underlings rather than their literate employers. This means that
there is not much in the way of written sources regarding vermin
control. Some of the sources that I have used are from well before
our period, however, earlier authors' work was copied down by
scribes who often added their own suggestions, eg. the Palladius
quotes are taken from an English MS of the early 15thC. However, I
think that the information must still have been considered as worth
writing down by people in the later middle ages.

I have tried to include only the herbs mentioned by him that
would have been available in the l5thC (ie. no New World,
Sub-Sahara African or Far East Asian plants). A final thought: all
of the below are complicated ways of dealing with pests; I'm
sure that squashing them is also a perfectly authentic
activity!

Fleas

Fleas are blood-drinkers, but are fairly fussy eaters, each
species deliberately having their own preferred species to live on,
however, they are wholly averse to taking a bite from anything they
can land onto. Fleas seem to have been a common problem at the
time, a problem exacerbated because no matter how clean people
were, animals always provided a reservoir for fresh infection; even
today, you are more likely to be bitten by a "cat flea"
or "dog flea" than you are a "human flea". Once
established in a house, fleas can be a difficult pest to remove as
an adult can live up to 18 months between feeds. Unsurprisingly,
fleas were a major problem, as this text from a late 14thC English
manual of French/English conversation makes clear: 'William,
undress and wash your legs, and then dry them with a cloth, and rub
them well for love of the fleas, that they may not leap on your
legs, for there is a peck of them lying in the dust under the
rushes...Hi the fleas bite me so! and do me great harm, for I have
scratched my shoulders till the blood flows'.

In concurrence, the G oodman of Paris (GoP, 1393) tells his wife
that one of the ways to 'bewitch and bewitch again ' her
'husband to be' is to make sure that his bed is free of
fleas during the summer. He comes up with various methods of
dealing with these ' familiar beasts to men' : firstly he
recommends the placing of flea-traps around the affected room: If
the room be strewn with alder leaves, the fleas will be caught
thereon '; I have heard tell that if you have at night one or
two trenchers slimed with glue or turpentine and set about the
room, with a lighted candle in the midst of each trencher, they
will become stuck there'.

The GoP thoughtfully (in a different part of his book) tells us
how to make glue: 'it behoves you peel holly when it is at the
sap (whi ch is commonly from the month of May up to August) and
then boil the bark in water until the topmost layer separate; then
peel it off, and when it is peeled, wrap up that which remains in
elder leaves or other large leaves, and set it in some cool place ,
as in a cellar, or within the earth, or in a cold dung heap for the
space of nine days or more, until it is decayed. And the n behoveth
it to pound it like brayed cabbage and to make it up into cakes
like woad, and then go wash the cakes one after another, and break
them up like wax; and let them not be too much washed in the first
water, nor in too hard a water.

and after you may break it up all together and knead it in
running water and put it in a pot and keep it well covered'.
The great advantage of this glue is that it can be made whilst
insect infestations are at their worst, ie. during the summer.

A 15thC English Leechbook (collection of medical recipes)
suggests the following "traps": 'For fleas and lice
to slay them, take horsemint and strew it in your house, and it
will slay them' or 'Take the juice of rue and anoint your
body with it' or 'Take gorse and boil it in water, and
sprinkle that water about the house, and they will die. Palladius
(5thC) recommended bring fleas to a sticky end on surfaces which
were often sprinkled with oil dregs. John Gerard's Herball
makes the following claims for: Fleabane (Erigeron sp.) 'burned
where flies, gnats, fleas or any other venomous things are, doth
drive them away' Fleawort (Plaintains or Plantago sp.)
'some hold that the herb strewn in the chamber where many fleas
be, will drive them away, for which cause it took the name Flea
wort: but I think it is rather because the seed does resemble a
flea so much, that it is hard to discerne the one from the
other'; Willow herb (Primilaceae or Lysimachia sp.), 'it is
reported that the fume or smoke of the herbe burned doth drive away
fleas and gnats and all manner of venomous beasts'

Ibn-el-Beithar, a 13thC Spanish Moslem writer, recommended
macerating a cucurbit (Citrullus colycynthus) or oleander (Nerium
oleander) in water and spraying the liquid around to get rid of
fleas. If all of the above herbs proved ineffective, the GoP also
had some hints for "direct- action":

When the coverlets, furs or dresses wherein there are fleas, are
folded and shut tightly up, as in a chest tightly corded with
straps, or in bag well tied up and pressed, or otherwise put and
pressed so that the aforesaid fleas be without light and air and
kept imprisoned, then will they perish forthwith and die...... The
other way that I have tried [to catch fleas] and 'tis true:
take a rough cloth and spread it about your room and over your bed,
and all the fleas that shall hop on it will be caught, so that you
may carry them away with the cloth wherever you will.. I have seen
blankets [of white wool] set on the straw and on the bed, and when
the black fleas hopped on, they were the sooner found upon the
white and killed.'

This latter way of dealing with fleas seems to be corroborated
by the duties of the Chamberlain in John Russell's 15thC Book
of Nurture (as Russell meant the book to be used to teach male
servants it's clear that outside, of the GoP's house, pest
control is not just a female activity): 'Return in haste to
your lord's chamber, strip the clothes off the bed and cast
them aside and beat the feather-bed, but not so as to waste any
feathers, and see that the blankets and sheets be clean'.

Nits and Lice

Fleas were not the only blood-suckers to afflict the population,
the Leechbook had suggested a number of cures 'for nits in the
head': [1] Make lye of wild nept (bryony) and therewith wash
your head, & it will destroy them; [2] Take quicklime or piment
[spiced wine], amd make powder of them, and mix the powder with
vinegar and annoint the head with it. And this destroys them
without falling of hair or any other harm; [3] Take seawater or
else brine, and wash your head, and that shall destroy them; [4]
Take the juice of a herb that is called blight, and annoint your
head with it, and both lice and nits shall fall away.; [5] Take a
broad list [strip of cloth] the length of a girdle, and annoint the
one side with fresh grease mingled with quick-silver, and spread on
it the powder of lichen and press on it with your finger so that it
sticks firmly to it, and then fold it together, and sew together
the sides; and then wind it in a linen cloth; and sew it together,
and wear it henceforth; and the lice & nits shall die. This has
been well proved. In 'Styrre Hyt Well', a collection of
15th century manuscripts found in Samuel Pepys' library, one
recipe claims that 'to slay lice or nits. Take the herb broom
and crush it and anoint them with juice and it will slay them'.
Hortus Sanitus, a Venetian book from 1511 shows lice being brushed
out of a man's hair. John Gerard's Herball claims that:
cotton-weed or cudweed (Graphalium or Filago sp.), 'boiled in
strong lees cleans the hair from nits and lice'. Palladius
claimed that staveacre and cumin ground in wine and the juice of
sour lupin would do the trick. To intercept gnats on their way to a
human host, Palladius used oil dregs or soot from the fire in your
room. Interestingly (in the light of the Leechbook's advice),
he claimed that washing sheep in seawater would clear them of
biting insects and allow their fleece to grow, though he never made
the same claim for the riddance of human pests. Another way to slay
fleas was the use of watered cucumber seed, ground cumin, lupine or
'psilotre' (probably psilothre or psiloter - Bryonia
diocia) 'cast on the ground'.

Mosquitos and Gnats

More thirsty insects which required advice from the GoP: 'I
have seen in diverse chambers, that when one had gone to bed they
were full of mosquitoes,which at the smoke of the breath came to
sit on the faces of those that slept, and stung them so hard, that
they were forced to get up and light a fire of hay, in order to
make a smoke so that they were forced to fly away or die, and this
may be done by day if they be suspected, and likewise he that has a
mosquito net may protect himself with it'. The Roman writer
Pliny (1stC AD) suggested the burning of galbanum resin derived
from the fennel plant. Galbanum, when mixed with sulphur was also
recommended by Palladius as was fresh oil dregs, an oil dregs/ox
gall mixture, a oil/ivy mixture, chamber soot or burnt
waterleeches!. John Gerard thought that burnt fleabane or willow
herb would drive off gnats, as would wormwood oil.

Flies

The medieval town environment was frequently none too sanitary
(particularly the streets), and would have provided an ideal
breeding ground for flies. The GoP comes to the rescue with some
traps though: 'If you have a chamber or a passage where there
is a great resort of flies, take little sprigs of fern and tie them
to threads like to tassels, and hang them up and all the flies will
settle on them at eventide; then take down the tassels and throw
them out'.

Shut up your chamber closely in the evening, but let there be a
little opening in the wall towards the east, and as soon as the
dawn breaks, all the flies will go forth through this opening, and
let it then be stopped up'.

Take a bowl of milk and a hare's gall and mix them one with
another and then set two or three of these bowls in places where
the flies gather and all that taste them will die.. otherwise have
a linen rag tied at the bottom of a pot with an opening in the
neck, and set that pot in the place that the flies gather and smear
it within with honey, or apples, or pears; when it is full of flies
set a trencher over the mouth and shake it'.

Take raw red onions and shred them and set it where the flies
gather and all that taste them will die'.

These last two traps are similar to a "traditional"
English remedy, which uses the fly agaric toadstool soaked in milk.
John Gerard burned willow herb or fleabane to rid himself of flies.
Ibn-el-Beithar recommended lacing meat with monkshood (very
poisonous) or making a spray from the juice of oleander. More from
the GoP: Have little twigs covered with glue on a basin of
water'. This procedure requires a little elaboration on the
technique outlined above for making glue: 'And he who would
make glue for water, let him warm a little oil and therein melt his
glue; and then lime his line'.

Have a string hanging soaked in honey, and the flies will come
and settle on it and in the evening let them be taken in a
bag'.

Direct action might be required on the part of the GoP though:
Have whisks [little flat shovels rather like today's fly-swats]
wherewith to slay them by hand...Have your windows shut full tight
with oiled or other cloth, or with parchment or something else, so
tightly that no f ly may enter, and let the flies that be within be
slain with the whisk or otherwise as above, and no others will come
in'. The GoP develops the "prevention is better than
cure" policy hinted at in the above passage in another piece
of advice: Finally it seems that flies will not stop in a room
where there are no standing tables, forms, dressers or other things
where they can set tle and rest, for if they have nothing but
straight walls on which to settle and cling, they will not settle,
nor will they in a shady or damp place. Therefore it seems that if
the room is well watered and well closed and shut up, and if
nothing is left lying on the floor, no fly will settle
there.'

What's probably more likely is that flies will not stop in a
room where untidy humans haven't been carelessly leaving bits
of food lying around! The GoP also had a remedy for dealing with
flies that afflict livestock too: Note that flies will never swarm
on a horse that is greased with butter or with old salt grease. Not
every means of getting rid of flies was used though: Caxton
(reassuringly) lists flies as being 'beestes' unfit for
human consumption in a French-English vocabulary.

Moths

Moths were a common enough problem in the Middle Ages, Lawrence
Andrewe in the 15th Century wrote: 'The Motte breeds among
clothes until they have bitten it into pieces and it is a maniable
worm, and yet it hides itse lf in the cloth so that it can scantly
be seen and it breeds gladly in clothes that have been in an evil
air, or in a rain or m ist, and so laid up without hanging in the
sun or other sweet air after'. Similar advice was given by the
GoP: 'in order to preserve your fur coverlets it is apt often
to air them, in order to prevent the damage which moths may do to
them; and because such vermin gather when the cold weather of
autumn and winter grows milder and are born in the summer, at such
time you'd be advised to set out furs and stuffs in the sun in
fair and dry weather; and if there comes a dark and damp mist that
clings to you r dresses and you fold them in such condition, that
mist folded and wrapped up in your dresses will shelter and breed
worse vermin than before. Whereas choose a fine, dry day and as
soon as you see heavier weather coming, before that it reachs you
cause your dresses to be hung up under cover and shaken to get rid
of most of the dust, then cleaned by beating them with dry rods
'.

"Chemical warfare" was also the order of the day.
Lawrence Andrewe advises that 'The herbs that are bitter and
strongly smelling are good to lay among such clothes, as the bay
leaves, cypress wood.' 'Styrre Hyt Well' says that
'to prevent damage by moths to clothes, take wormwood and rue
and boil them in water and brush your clothes with the same
water'.

The GoP suggested adding strong scents to clothes (but in this
case it is not clear whether this is to deter moths or just to make
clothes smell nice): 'The roses of Provence are the best for
putting in dresses, but they must be dried and sifted through a
sieve at mid-August so that the worms fall through the holes of the
sieve, and after that spread it over the dresses'. John Gerard
thought that the leaves and branches of cottonweed (or cudweed),
golden mothwort (or cudweed) sweet trefoile, rosemary, wormwood and
sea wormwood, 'being laid [separately] in warderobes and
presses keepeth apparell from moths'. He also recommended sweet
willow 'whole shrub fruit and all', shavings of wood and
the resin from the cypress tree.

Palladius said that the best cure for 'prasocorides'
[moths] was to wrap a sheep's stomach for two days around the
place that the moths were breeding; after that time you could
expect that 'there shall you find them heaped slain
there'.

Rats and Mice

Medieval streets were usually strewn with household waste and
the ordure of animals despite the attempts of civic authorities to
combat such refuse (too large a subject to go into here). Such an
environment was an ideal breeding ground for rodents, and these
were a constant menace to provisions if they could establish
themselves in a household: No sir, please God, for I make bold that
you shall be well and comfortably lodged here [for there are no
fleas nor bugs, nor other vermin], save that there is a great peck
of rats and mice - Manual of French/English conversation, late
14thC.

Medieval rats were black rats. These have since been driven to
extinction in Britain by their larger, more aggressive cousins the
brown rat. Black rats have more of an affinity for living in homes
than the browns, and less of a liking for sewers. It has been
estimated that each medieval home had 2-3 black rats each
supporting 4-5 fleas; black rat fleas are far less fussy about
their choice of host than the strain of flea which lives on brown
rats. It is easy to see why the Black Death spread so rapidly!

The Roman writer Pliny (who was held as a great authority on the
animal kingdom during the Middle Ages) wrote that mice reproduced
quicker than any other animal. The GoP gives advice in case
'rats are harming your corn, bacon, cheese and other
provisions'.

Fortunately, the natural enemies of rodents could be employed,
for example the GoP claims he controlled the vermin by 'by
having a good array of cats. Such was the reputation of felines as
hunters that during the 14-18th centuries, cat corpses with a dead
mouse stuffed intheir mouth were sometimes built into the
foundations of English houses as it was thought that this would
deter other rodents from entering the premises.

Human "professionals" could also be employed, the GoP
recommending the hiring of 'ratcatchers and mousecatchers'.
So what techniques could people use? Why, 'by traps made of
little planks upon sticks' (GoP) of course!

These brought rodents to a grisly end; a sight which might upset
people of a delicate disposition, such as the Prioress in The
Canterbury Tales Prologue:

She wolde wepe, if that she sawe a mous caught in a trappe,
if it were deed or bledde

There is an illustration of a mousetrap in the right wing of
Ingelbrecht's Annunciation Triptych by the Master of Flemalle
c. 1425-1430

The GoP does not tell us directly what bait he'd use in a
trap, but the ingredients in described in the following poisoned
bait (without the toxic aconite) would seem to be suitable:
'Take an ounce of aconite , two ounces of fine arsenic, a
quarter [of a pound] of pig's fat, a pound of fine wheaten
[white] meal and four eggs, and out of these make bread and cook it
in the oven and cut it into strips and nail them down with a
nail'. Another poison that the GoP laid down included:
'cakes of paste and powdered aconite, setting these near to
their holes where they have naught to drink'.

Failing that, follow this advice: 'If you cannot keep them
from finding water to drink, it is good to cut up little pieces of
sponge, and then if they swallow these and drink afterwards, they
will swell up and die'.

Poisons were also popular amongst other writers. John Gerard
recommended the use of the the root of hellebore 'in the weight
of two pence' which 'kills mice and rats, being made up
with honey and wheat flour'. Palladius used black hellebore
mixed with fat, bread, cheese or flour.

Other options included the juice of bruised wild cucumber
('coloquynt') which 'slays the mice as diverse men have
said'. A less complicated trap was to pour thick oil into a pan
on which the rodent would be caught at night; Palladius claimed
that the 'dregs may slay more than do your cats'.

Palladius also recommended blocking up the mouse holes with
daffodils: 'They gnaw it out, but dead down shall they
fall'. Nature, in the form of disease, could also be asked to
lend a hand: if oak ashes were cast around the mouse-holes then a
disease called 'the scabbe' could be expected to soon arise
and kill the unfortunate rodents. Another plan was to make 'a
smoke and stink' to drive off the rodents, suitable ingredients
being hartshorn, goat's hooves, lily roots or galbanum.

Cockroaches and Weevils

Cockroaches and weevils seem to find grain, flour and other
organic matter absolutely irresistable. As the staple food of
humans was also cereals, the two populations were bound to come
into conflict. Ibn-el- Beither recommended Planetre (Platanus sp.)
to deal with cockroaches.

Pliny recommended dressing seeds with the ashes of a cat or
weasel or steeping the seed in ox-gall. He also related how a toad
fixed by one of its longer legs at the door would frighten weevils
away. He also recommended storing the grain in airtight containers
or in a pit, especially if the grain was covered in gypsum or
chalk; this is a particularly effective solution as the granular
material will ruin the insects' carapaces if they don't
suffocate first.

Vinegar, salty fish or an unbaked brick soaked in water were
also claimed by Pliny as weevil deterrents, as was the
"heliotrope plant" (though the modern heliotrope is of
New World origin). Palladius claimed that the cure for
'gurglions' [weevils] was coriander leaves placed on the
floor and changed often; dried 'coniza' (probably conyse or
flea-bane - Conyza sp. or Inula sp.) put under the grain was also
deemed effective.

ANTS

And on the subject of raiders of the larder, the GoP wrote that
'ants abound in a garden and if you cast sawdust of oaken
planks upon their heap, they will die or depart at the first rain
that falls, for the sawdust retains the moisture'. Pliny
recommended painting bands around ants' nests.

The bands were to be made of either red earth and tar or oil
dregs. He also point out that ants could be attracted to dried fish
and destroyed. Palladius used vinegar and ashes mixed with red
ochre whilst also claiming that burnt cockle shells or a mixture of
origano and brimstone would if 'cast upon their hole...will
make them flee'. Other measures of his included the ubiquitous
oil dregs and soot, placing an owls heart on their nest, or placing
chalk or the juice of 'rucul' (rocket) or
'syngrene' (horseleek) around the nest

Bees

More airborne pests that John Gerard dealt with using
'Fusseballs', a type of mushroom, which 'being set on
fire kill or smother bees' Unfortunately I've not come
across anything on wasps. However, the little blighters will quite
happily drown themselves in a jar containing a mixture of honey and
water - a method which I think would not look out of place next to
some of the fly-trap designs outlined above.

Ecclesiastical intervention

Where infestations of pests became an epidemic, Mother Church
sometimes invoked divine intervention to deal with the problem.
Some examples from the late medieval period include: in 1479
Cockchafers indicted before the ecclesiastical court at Lausanne
and condemned to banishment; in 1485 High Vicar of Valence comanded
caterpillars to appear before him, gave them a defence counsel and
finally condemned them to leave the area; in 1488 High Vicar of
Autun commanded the weevils in neighbouring parishes to stop their
attacks on crops and grain and excommunicated them.

Stupid medievals eh? It's more accurate to say that they
were trying to find a way of curing something that they could
observe without understanding why it was actually happening. Many
pests go through a boom-bust cycle, the population increasing in
size during one year and being markedly less the next year as their
food runs out or the number of predators catches up. Once a plague
of pests had reached bad enough proportions to warrant
ecclesiastical attention, the epidemic was already on the wane. The
intervention of the priests, and hence God too, seemed to have paid
off. Nor was it just the medievals who performed such rites; though
the practice later declined, the last such excommunication of pests
took place as late as 1830 in Denmark.

Sources

1. The Goodman of Paris - M.E. Power; 2. The Constant Pest -
George Ordish; 3. Herbal, or the History of Plants - John Gerard;
4. A Leechbook or Collection of Medical Recipes of the Fifteenth
Century - Warren Dawson; 6. Palladius on Husbandry - Rev. B. Lodge
(Early English Text Society); 7. Early English Meals and Manners -
Frederick J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S.); 8. Dialogues in French and
English - William Caxton (ed. H. Bradley, E.E.T.S.); 9.
"Manual of French Conversation" in Revue Critique - Paul
Meyer; 10. Styrre Hyt Well - Samuel Pepys with a foreword by Delia
Smith; 11. A History of Herbal Plants (1977) - Richard Le
Strange